Phototherapy, in which a human body is stimulated by optical energy from a light beam to treat or prevent a disease, is well-known and is widely used for a purpose of fatigue recovery or skin care or in fields of alternative medicine and pain treatment, etc.
For a phototherapy device to be easily used anytime and anywhere, the present applicant has been developing a light been irradiation treatment device which is connected to a smartphone to drive a light beam irradiator by using power of the smartphone.
Particularly, nowadays, the prediction that smartphones will serve as substitutes for medical devices are being continuously made, and studies for enabling people to directly manage their health using smartphones and precise sensors are coming to the fore. A medical device connected to a smartphone or a tablet personal computer (PC) is able to share data, which is measured to make a patient interested in health management, online with a doctor in real time.
Apple has already been promoting iPhone as a medical device platform for a long time, and nowadays, the entire medical market is focusing on developing a device for this. Particularly, “iStethoscope” which checks heartbeats by using an iPhone's built-in microphone is present, and Withings, which is a France-based venture capital firm, has developed a blood pressure measurement device which is used by being connected to an iPad or an iPhone. The blood pressure measurement device records an automatically measured heart rate and blood pressure in a smartphone. AgaMatrix has collaborated with Sanofi, which is a pharmaceutical firm, and has succeeded in combining “iBGStar,” which is a device for measuring glucose in blood, with an iPhone.
The need for performing phototherapy easily and conveniently anytime and anywhere using a smartphone is also being increased in the field of phototherapy devices. However, it is difficult to control a light beam irradiator by connecting the light beam irradiator to a smartphone and simply using an application program.
For example, although an output signal of a smartphone can be used as a power driving signal of a light beam irradiator when the light beam irradiator is connected to a charging port of the smartphone, it is difficult for the signal to be turned on/off or a predetermined control signal to be output.
Also, when a light beam irradiator is connected to an audio output port of a smartphone, because a signal is too weak for the light beam irradiator to be controlled by an audio signal output from the audio output port according to an application program, the light beam irradiator is not properly driven.
A smartphone interface device for phototherapy for enabling a light beam irradiator to be properly driven stably according to an application program by connecting the light beam irradiator to a smartphone and using power of the smartphone is required.
As the related art, Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1385707 “Color therapy system using visible light” is present. In Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1385707, according to a color therapy device operation request signal selected by a user, a color therapy device, which is attached to a color therapy site of a body by a double-sided adhesive tape, a hydrogel pad, an air absorption plate, or the like to be used to intensively irradiate the color therapy site with visible light and has a light source (e.g., a light emitting diode (LED)) embedded therein to emit visible light for color therapy of the body (e.g., visible light in a wavelength band of 400 nm to 800 nm), is connected to a portable smart communication device (e.g., a smartphone), in which a color therapy program for controlling a color therapy operation of a color therapy device is installed, to perform color therapy.
In Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1385707, by connecting a light beam irradiator to an interface terminal of a smart communication device such as a charging port, a USB port, or an audio output port and driving the light beam irradiator by an application program installed in the smart communication device, it is actually impossible to provide a driving power of the light beam irradiator by output signals of the interface terminals and simultaneously control the light beam irradiator according to a selected light beam irradiation time, light beam brightness, light beam irradiation pattern and the like.
Particularly, in Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1385707, a disconnecting/connecting gender is used for connecting or disconnecting power jacks of a plurality of color therapy devices to or from a single smart communication device, and has a switch for simultaneously starting or ending the plurality of color therapy devices to start or end the color therapy devices.
However, in Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1385707, the disconnecting/connecting gender is for connecting or disconnecting, and it is actually difficult to control a light beam irradiation time, light beam brightness, and a light beam irradiation pattern of the color therapy device by the disconnecting/connecting gender, and it is difficult for the color therapy device to be stably driven due to being affected by a smartphone.
Consequently, a smartphone interface device for phototherapy having a separate microcontroller unit (MCU) is proposed. By connecting the smartphone interface device for phototherapy, which is connected to a light beam irradiator, to a smartphone via a universal serial bus on-the-go (USB OTG) module, the light beam irradiator can be driven more stably, and a larger variety of light beam irradiators can be driven and controlled.